RosanneHood
Unregistered User
(5/19/01 5:56 pm)
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Networking!
Networking!
Some time back, a lady left a message on my mobile phone. I was bushwalking at the time and the message was redirected to my mobile from the home phone. From the summit of Bimberi Peak, I checked my messages. This lady had wanted to buy honey. She left a phone number, but it was too mumbled to hear it. Never mind, I thought, I can get the number from the Call Number Display on the house phone when I get home. I deleted the message.
Four days later, back home again, I checked the Call Number Display for recently called numbers. PRIVATE was the only number that I did not recognise, and that would have been the lady about honey. Well, if you have your number blocked, you can not expect a reply to a question, so she did not get one.
Two months later, the phone rang again, with PRIVATE on the Call Number Display. It was this lady again. She wanted to buy one kilo of honey, and she wondered if I could deliver it? She lived in Queanbeyan and wondered if I went there often. I had to explain that my visits there were rather random, besides I didn’t sell honey in containers, I expected people to bring their own. However I guessed it could be arranged. But I was curious as to how someone in Queanbeyan had got my number as I do not advertise my honey there!
“Well, it’s like this,” said the lady, telling me her name was Denise. “I have a friend in Widgewa Road and I visited her late last year. She had a copy of some local paper and I saw your name listed for selling honey. I have been searching for a local supply of honey for about three years!”
“Fancy that!” I said, adding that she would have been looking at the Stony Creek Gazette in which I write a monthly tale, and which lists local products and services for sale/wanted on the back page. “My honey is $6 a kilo,” I reminded her. I was curious, though, as to why, in three years, if desiring honey, she had not purchased it from the abundance of supermarkets in Queanbeyan.
“I have been advised to eat only fresh, local honey, in an effort to desensitise myself to the allergic reactions I get to pollens in the air.”
“Oh, I see,” I said. “Supermarket honey is no good at all, then, as it has been heated for ease of bottling in a hurry, whereas pouring a kilo of my honey into a jar takes simply ages. Heating honey destroys the properties you need in it. You want raw honey that has never been heated. But if it is very local honey you need, then I am thinking you are talking to the wrong beekeeper! My bees live at Radcliffe, they never get moved. I suspect they find everything they need within a 10km radius of their hives. If you lived in Douglas Close (which is the road next to Widgewa Road) my honey would be just the thing! But I doubt very much that my bees fly all the way to Queanbeyan, 20km distant, to search for nectar. If they found the pickings better in Queanbeyan, they would have moved there themselves, ages ago! You need to find a Queanbeyan beekeeper!”
“But that’s the problem, I can’t find one. I have been searching for at least three years!”
I had a fleeting vision of a flustered someone attempting to follow a Queanbeyan bee to see if it would lead them back to the hive. Could be a vexed chase!
“Three years? Goodness! Look, leave it with me. I’m sure there is a Queanbeyan beekeeper. I bet I can find you one.”
“Oh really? That would be absolutely wonderful! Here, I’ll give you my number to write down, it’s my work number.”
How does one find a Queanbeyan beekeeper? Now it was my problem. But I had a few clues. And I was pretty sure that Dick Johnston would have even more clues as to how to find a Queanbeyan beekeeper. So I sent him an email. Dick was back promptly to say he’d ponder it.
It was hardly five minutes later when another message from Dick was to report that he had found a Queanbeyan beekeeper with honey to sell. I now had a name and a number.
I rang Denise with the news. She was flabbergasted! She was so utterly amazed that in ten minutes she had found the answer to a three-year quest. “How did you do it?” she wanted to know.
“Oh, I said, it’s a case of knowing who to ask! And being savvy to the resources! You should check out the Bindaree Bees web site some time.”
So, if I have lined a Queanbeyan beekeeper up with a regular customer, all thanks to Dick at Bindaree Bees!
(Migrated from the original posting dated February 2001.)
Edited by: bindaree  at: 5/20/01 8:51:22 pm
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